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The American Defeat at Quebec The American Defeat at Quebec Anthony Nardini Department of History Villanova University Edited by Cynthia Kaschub We were walking alongside the St. Lawrence River, along a roadway choked with cars. The small sidewalk was slick, covered in ice, the blustery wind pushing us down the street. I had thought the road would eventually lead back to the heart of the city, but I was wrong. We had become lost in Quebec, stuck between the great cliff the city was built upon and the river. It was here that I first became aware of what had transpired here over two hundred twenty-five years ago. A large plaque, attached to the facing rock, celebrated the bravery of the Canadians who pushed back American General Montgomery and his Rebel force. I wondered just what had happened at this very spot. What had happened to Montgomery and his men? Why were there Americans attacking Quebec City? Cause for Invasion On June 16, 1775, just two months after the clash at Lexington and Concord, the First Continental Congress appointed George Washington as “General & Commander in Chief of the American Forces.”1 By September 14, 1775, the day Washington gave orders to Colonel Benedict Arnold to “take Command of the Detachment from the Continental Army against Quebeck,” American forces had already seized Ticonderoga and Crown Point in New York.2 Earlier in September, an army of 2,000 under Brigadier General Richard Montgomery began to push towards Forts St. Jean and Chambly, in Canadian territory. The Americans were now poised for a full invasion of Canada, fueled by Washington’s belief, as stated by Donald Barr Chidsey, that, “the best defense is an offense and that it is best to keep your enemy off balance.”3 Controlling the Hudson and the Richelieu-Lake Champlain region would prevent the British from splitting the colonies in two. The knowledge that the opposing British forces in Canada “consisted of 800 regulars divided among a number of different posts” made it even more prudent to 1Philander D. Chase, ed., The Papers of George Washington: Revolutionary War Series Vol. 1 (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1985), 1. 2Ibid., 457. 3Donald Barr Chidsey, The War in the North: An Informal History of the American Revolution in and near Canada (New York: Crown Publishers, Inc., 1967), 23. seize the initiative and invade.4 But it was more than just military strategy that necessitated an invasion of Canada. A combination of propaganda, libertarian fervor, and misinformed beliefs energized the Americans to invade. It was believed that the entirety of Quebec felt the same oppression as Americans felt in Boston and that the Canadians would welcome the Americans as liberators. The passage of the Quebec Act incensed many English-speaking Canadians. The act enlarged the province to include the Great Lakes, the area of land north of the Ohio River to the Mississippi, the Mississippi to its source, and the Great Lakes to Hudson Bay territory. This land was then consigned to the fur trade and the Indians.5 The act also promised more religious tolerance: namely the freedom to practice Roman Catholicism along with a new oath of allegiance that allowed Catholics to participate in government and hold office. American outrage was due to the restrictions on land and the pro- Papist sentiment. English speaking merchants were now alienated in Canada which country?—non-English people were now able to become part of the government without losing their identity. 6 Congress, along with the Committee of Correspondence, sent both letters and Patriots to Canada to assess and sway public opinion. The provisional congress of New York sent north a “batch of letters . appealing to Canadians across the border to join them in the struggle for liberty.” 7 Customs officer Thomas Ainslie, who later volunteered to defend Quebec, took note of the attempt to win Canadians over to the American cause: “The Agents & friends of the Congress had not been idle—by word & by writing they had poison’d their minds—they were brought to believe that the Minister had laid a plan to enslave them.”8 II. The Passage to Quebec Washington, the new commander-in-chief, took the “tatterdemalion mob” that was the Continental Army and formed it into a disciplined unit, “teaching then to drill like soldiers, arming them adequately, getting them into proper uniforms, and enforcing the rudiments of sanitation.”9 At Washington’s headquarters at Cambridge, Arnold called for volunteers for his expedition from Washington’s troops, and was met with a tremendous response, though Washington agreed to 4Gustave Lanctot, Canada and the American Revolution 1774-1783 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967), 63. 5 Robert McConnell Hatch, Thrust for Canada: The American Attempt on Quebec in 1775-1776 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1979), 9. 6 Ibid., 13. 7 Barry K. Wilson, Benedict Arnold: A Traitor in Our Midst (Ithaca: McGill-Queens’ University Press, 2001), 47. 8 Sheldon S. Cohen, ed., Canada Preserved: The Journal of Captain Thomas Ainslie (New York: New York University Press, 1968), 18. 9 Hatch, Thrust for Canada, 64. send only eleven hundred men to Quebec. Seven hundred and forty-seven New Englanders were given to Arnold, along with three companies of riflemen from Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania.10 Private John Joseph Henry, a mere boy of sixteen, noted the differences between the two groups: “The principal distinction between us, was in our dialects, our arms, and our dress. It was the silly fashion of those times, for riflemen to ape the manners of savages.”11 Regional prejudices and distrust would later become a factor in the campaign. The route Arnold was to follow came from a map and journal Lt. John Montresor, a British officer, charted in 1761. The route led from the Kennebeck River of Maine through an uninhabited wilderness called the Height of Land. From there they would travel down the Chaudière River towards Quebec, crossing overland to the St. Lawrence River. The troops would cross the river, appearing just outside the walls of Quebec on the Plains of Abraham. It was an audacious plan, seeking to surprise the British by taking a lesser-known route. The British would be more prepared for Montgomery’s force, which took the easier way up Lake Champlain to the Richelieu, and then up the St. Lawrence. Arnold would soon learn that Montresor’s journal and map contained flaws, and his invasion force would not have the easy time that Montresor and his small scout party experienced. 10 Wilson, Benedict Arnold, 54. 11 John Joseph Henry, Account of Arnold’s Campaign against Quebec (New York: Arno Press, Inc., 1968), 11. The expedition touched off from Newburyport on September 18, traveling north-by-northeast aboard the sloops Commander, Britannia, Conway, Abigail, and Swallow, and the schooners Houghton, Eagle, Hannah, and Broad Bay.12 It traveled to the mouth of the Kennebeck River. The trip was expected to be dangerous, as the Patriots had to run past British warships enforcing an embargo against the colonies.13 The real problem was with the ships, which caused much sickness for the men, and only allowed them as far as Gardinerstown, on the coast of Maine. The men then traveled to Fort Western (present day Augusta, Maine), nearly forty miles from the sea up the Kennebec River. Arnold’s men would now have to travel down the Kennebec on their newly made bateaux. Prior to the expedition Arnold had ordered two hundred of them from a local shipwright, Reuben Colburn. The flat-bottomed riverboats, with flared sides and tapered bows and sterns, measured from eighteen to twenty-five feet long and weighed nearly four hundred pounds apiece.14 Arnold wrote to Washington that he found “the Batteaus completed, but many of them smaller than the Directions given, & very badly built.”15 The expedition was delayed as Arnold ordered improvements made to his bateaux. This was just the first unexpected halt, a setback for Arnold’s invasion timetable, which estimated the invasion to take twenty days. The troops were able to land at Ft. Western without much difficulty, where Arnold sent out forward scouts and formed his army. Arnold broke them into four divisions, sending the riflemen, under the command of Daniel Morgan, to clear the way. On September 26, they were followed by the second division under Colonel Christopher Greene. Major Return Meigs commanded the third division, which followed Greene the next day. Colonel Roger Enos, who brought up the rear with the supplies, led the fourth division.16 Arnold, traveling ahead in a lighter, more dependable birch-bark canoe, met with the forward elements of his force at Fort Halifax. Later they moved on through a waterfall at Skowhegan. Arnold arrived at Norridgewock by Saturday, October 2. It was here that Arnold’s men began to face greater challenges, which would lead to problems further into the wilderness. Isaac Senter, a New Hampshire doctor now in the army as a surgeon, witnessed the problems with the bateaux as they were moved over the portages: “Many of our bateaux were nothing but wrecks . .a quantity of dry cod fish, by this time was received, as likewise a number of barrels of dry bread. The fish lying loose in the bateaux, and being continually washed with the fresh water running into the bateaux. The bread casks 12 Chidsey, The War in the North, 32. 13 Hatch, Thrust for Canada, 56. 14 Ibid, 70. 15 Chase, Papers of George Washington, 2:40. 16 Hatch, Thrust for Canada, 71-72. not being waterproof, admitted the water in plenty . .soured the whole bread. We were now curtailed of a very valuable and large part of our provisions.”17 The army was delayed almost a week at Norridgewock, “drying out their supplies, throwing out bad food, and getting around the treacherous portage.”18 Having not even left the area of Maine, Arnold was now delayed two weeks due to faulty boats and poor handling.
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